NCSoft’s CEO Kim Taek-jin, who created digital human technology, made a surprise appearance at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, where NCSoft unveiled its latest game, Project M, and digital human technology for the first time.
Partnering with Epic Games’ “State of Unreal,” NCSoft demonstrated advanced technology using the new tools in Unreal Engine. Yoon Song-yi, NCSoft’s Chief Strategy Officer, introduced Project M on stage.
In the Project M trailer, Kim Taek-jin, NCSoft’s Chief Creative Officer who oversees game development, appeared as a “digital human” to explain the game’s world and play concept. Project M is a digital human created by combining NCSoft’s artificial intelligence technology with visual capabilities in art and graphics.
Team Sweeney, Epic Games’ CEO, praised NCSoft’s high-quality digital human, saying, “It’s very impressive.”
All dialogue in the trailer was generated using Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology, an AI voice synthesis system that creates natural-sounding speech from text input by capturing a specific person’s voice, tone, emotion, and more. The facial expressions and lip-sync animations of the digital human were produced using Voice-to-Face technology, an AI technique that automatically generates facial animations to match dialogue or voice input.
Project M is an upcoming interactive element-based action-adventure game that NCSoft is currently developing for console platforms. It features a unique characteristic in that the story changes and expands based on the information acquired by the user. It is being developed using NCSoft’s proprietary technology, including motion capture and visual special effects (VFX), and features high-quality graphics that are close to reality.
Yoon Song-yi, CSO, stated that “Project M is an innovative new work developed by NCSoft, combining its cutting-edge AI and graphics technology,” and that “NCSoft’s AI technology is being combined with Unreal Engine 5 to enhance the overall quality of the game.”